t with their lunches,--though they
usually ate it all up before lunch-time came, he said. In one of his
books Mr. Burroughs speaks of a schoolmate who, when dying, said, "I
must hurry, I have a long way to go over a hill and through a wood, and
it is getting dark." This was his brother Wilson, and he doubtless had
in mind this very course they used to take in going to school.

This school (where Jay Gould was his playmate) he attended only until he
was twelve years of age. A rather curious reciprocal help these two lads
gave each other--especially curious in the light of their subsequent
careers as writer and financier. The boy John Burroughs was one day
feeling very uncomfortable because he could not furnish a composition
required of him. Eight lines only were sufficient if the task was
completed on time, but the time was up and no line was written. This
meant being kept after school to write twelve lines. In this extremity.
Jay Gould came to his rescue with the following doggerel:--

"Time is flying past,
Night is coming fast,
I, minus two, as you all know,
But what is more
I must hand o'er
Twelve lines by night,
Or stay and write.
Just eight I've got
But you know that's not
Enough lacking four,
But to have twelve
It wants no more."

"I have never been able to make out what the third line meant," said Mr.
Burroughs. A few years later, when Jay Gould was hard up (he had left
school and was making a map of Delaware County), John Burroughs helped
him out by buying two old books of him, paying him eighty cents. The
books were a German grammar and Gray's "Elements of Geology." The embryo
financier was glad to get the cash, and the embryo writer unquestionably
felt the richer in possessing the books.

Mr. Burroughs loves to look off toward Montgomery Hollow and talk of the
old haunt. "I've taken many a fine string of trout from that stream," he
would say. One day he and his brother Curtis and I drove over there
and fished the stream, and he could hardly stay in the wagon the last
half-mile. "Isn't it time to get out now, Curtis?" he fidgeted every
little while. "Not yet, John,--not yet," said the more phlegmatic
brother. But it was August, and although the rapid mountain brook seemed
just the place for trout, the trout were not in their places. I shall
long remember the enticing stream, the pretty cascades, the high
shelving rocks sheltering the mossy nest of the